


bona fide bets

by roisale



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Gen, Lots of Food, also madi has the best headcanons/fic ideas it's pretty great, dumb bets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roisale/pseuds/roisale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Five more days, Hamuko,” Junpei says from the lounge. “Think you can hold on until then?” She slams the pantry door hard enough to possibly kill a man and he shuts up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bona fide bets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



They’ve got a long history of pointless bets between them and every single one of them has started with a bowl at Hagakure’s. Today is no different. 

“I,” Hamuko begins, pausing to slurp down the last few inches of noodle, “will never get tired of this special. Never.”

“It’s pretty good, yeah,” Junpei agrees, watching her demolish the beef bowl with a sort of bemused satisfaction. He’s seen a metric fuckton of food vanish down the seemingly insatiable black hole of her stomach over the course of a few months but it still never fails to amaze him. Or rather, it _almost_ never fails to amaze him. After exams or a particularly sweaty tennis match he can count on Hamuko to drag him to some fast food joint where he alternates between eating and watching her wolf down enough food to feed a pride of lions. Maybe just two lions, he amends silently as her face momentarily disappears behind the bowl when she lifts it up to finish off the soup base. 

“The best thing about coming here is always how much beef they heap on the noodles,” she says with a contented sigh after she sets the empty bowl on the counter.

“Well, it’s not a beef bowl without beef, you know.” He says it absentmindedly, poking at his own food with his chopsticks. “Bet you couldn’t go a week without it, though.”

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t _want_ to go a week without it, but that’s not the same as saying I _can’t_.”

His passive-aggressive sensors light up like the mall on Christmas and he leans back with a slight smirk. He’s just following a pattern they both know well – a series of terrible and often embarrassing situations as direct results of said pattern haven’t stopped them yet. “Try going vegan for a week, then.” 

Bright eyes narrow at the challenge and she crosses her arms with a huff. Her right wrist crooks just so and Junpei can’t help but marvel at how delicate it looks. He thinks of Chidori’s hands, pale and slender on a hospital blanket. Hamuko starts to reply and he snaps away from metal beds and back to attention. “That’s really not the same thing as going without meaty noodles, Junpei,” she says, but from the curve of her lips he can tell that she’s actually conceding to the wager. It’s slightly different from how she smiles when she turns a bet down because her cheeks don’t dimple nearly as much and it’s the right side of her mouth that turns up first instead of a uniform ascension. He doesn’t know when or why he picked up on this but he did, and the fact that probably nobody else has makes him kind of happy. 

“So what do I get when I win?” Making sure to look as smug as possible is part of the whole ordeal even though he knows she knows he isn’t actually trying to provoke her and that he’s just doing it for shits and giggles. She rolls her eyes at him anyway. 

The reply is playfully snippy. “You mean, what do I get when _I_ win?”

“Uhh... I’ll treat you to takoyaki for three days?” She hasn’t been to the takoyaki stand for a while, which is why he asks, but her expression (somewhere in between fear and trauma, he thinks, and he makes a mental note to investigate it later) has him backtracking fast. “Or maybe two cakes from the sweet shop?” Her face lights up and he takes it as an affirmative. “And if I win...”

“I’ll buy you the DVD set of that show you’ve been gushing about,” she offers, uncrossing her arms. “Was it the one about the asshole antagonist who had a thing for the main character’s older brother?”

“You’re on. And aren’t all bad guys assholes? That’s kind of what they do, right?”

“Occupation: Villain. Hobbies: Drinking piña coladas, getting caught in the rain and being a total _dick_. Something like that, you mean?” Hamuko takes a long, exaggerated chug from her cup of water. The slice of lemon stuck on the rim wobbles.

“Can you consider that last bit a hobby?” He thinks back to the first time he’d seen a movie with her, when he’d gone in with raised hopes and come out with mixed feelings over the ending. It was easier, then, to separate morality and categorize the world as black and white. Now, though, he isn’t so sure. The idea of fighting a reluctant villain still doesn’t sit well with him, but not in the same way it did before. Not like it did before Chidori.

She shrugs and splays her fingers on the countertop. Her nails are unpainted and tidy. “They can’t be full-time assholes. They’re human, too. Usually.”

They split the bill like usual and he follows her out of Hagakure’s, thinking that if there were any one person who knew what being human was all about, it’d probably be her.

The door swings shut behind him and he puts his game face on. He’s got a bet to win.

 

 

A day after she makes the bet with Junpei, Hamuko swears she’s going through withdrawal and munches her salad sadly during lunch, stabbing moodily at the croutons with her fork. Yukari looks over and makes a mildly sympathetic face. “Is a cake really worth it?”

Hamuko swallows before responding. “It’s not even about the cake anymore,” she says despondently. “We’ve made a million of these dumb bets and by the end of almost all of them I only keep going because I’m too stubborn to give it up.” A piece of leafy green vegetable hangs from the last tine of her fork, along with the impaled crouton. She eyes them warily. “Same goes for him, though. Remember when he shaved his goatee thing?”

“Kind of,” Yukari says, pondering. “Back in May?”

“Yeah, it was because we made this bet over no-shave November. I mean, it wasn't actually November, but I basically made him shave everywhere for an entire month.”

Yukari blinks slowly and moves on. “Okay, well, I think you could look up some decent vegan recipes if you get seriously desperate. I’m pretty sure most vegans don’t live off of salad greens and bread, anyway.”

“True,” Hamuko acknowledges, pointing her fork at Yukari. “Very true. I hope it’s as good as actual meat, though. I think I’ve been having dreams about Wuck burgers lately.”

“Soldier on, leader,” says Yukari as she hands Hamuko a chocolate chip granola bar and exits the room.

The granola bar mysteriously disappears within seconds and Hamuko decides that making this bet with Junpei probably ranks among the worst decisions of her high school career.

 

When tennis practice ends and she comes home to the dorm, her stomach is growling more than Koromaru in a battle and she heads straight for the kitchen. Junpei comes up with an infuriating grin and leans against the doorway with something in his hands, though, and the smell hits her before the specifics of the visual. Suddenly the only thought in her head is that takoyaki has _never_ looked so good. The Octopia wrapper doesn’t even dissuade her anymore and she discovers that she physically cannot look away from what has become, quite possibly, the most questionable commercially sold food-like substance in Iwatodai. The texture looks incredibly crisp and crunchy and the dark sauce dribbling down the takoyaki is a translucently reddish brown that she can almost _taste_. And then Junpei raises one to his mouth and bites into it with painful slowness. It must have been fresh as hell because tiny wisps of steam escape from where he’s bitten; the white of the filling contrasts sharply against the golden, perfectly fried skin and the diced octopus beckons with a near seductive glow.

She spends an indeterminable amount of time transfixed by what is essentially Junpei eating dramatically and doesn’t realize that the rest of the dorm is staring until he’s down to one takoyaki ball. The fucker holds it up and pops the whole damn thing in his mouth, chewing as slowly as possible. Hamuko makes a face at him and pushes past him to get into the kitchen, wondering if noodles would still be okay without any sort of meat or egg addition. Edible, at the very least, but she’s pretty sure that ‘edible’ won’t cut it in this situation. A very brief moment passes where she debates asking Akihiko for some sort of protein supplement but dismisses the thought, resolving to come back the idea later, if only as a last resort.

“Five more days, Hamuko,” Junpei says from the lounge. “Think you can hold on until then?” She slams the pantry door hard enough to possibly kill a man and he shuts up.

“I’d be more worried about myself than the bet if I were you,” Akihiko tells him. A noncommittal noise from Shinjiro follows.

“You do appear to be walking unarmed into the lion’s den,” Aigis agrees. “Sadly, your only ammunition is the string of steaks tied around your neck.”

“That doesn’t seem very safe,” Ken pipes up.

Junpei’s voice brightens up considerably. “It isn’t, but I’ve got a full arsenal, then!”

She hates to admit it, but he really does.

 

The next few days prove to be trying. Hamuko purposefully avoids Junpei at school, makes sure to attend student council, and shows up at the Home Ec room almost religiously. She can’t even eat most of what she bakes, though, because apparently eggs and milk are off-limits. The fact that she’s barred from dessert doesn’t bother her as much as it should. It’s not that she’s tired of sweets, but the smells of freshly baked cupcakes and heady vanilla don’t appeal to her nearly as much as they used to in the face of inaccessible salty alternatives. She finds herself eyeing Fuuka’s side of the room more and more often, watching the neat lines of onigiri form on the marble countertop. Fuuka usually takes pity on her and heaps up piles of the ones with vegan-friendly fillings for her to voraciously devour, but it’s hard to be satisfied with umeboshi when bowls of pork cutlet and shrimp tempura lie just out of reach. Which is a lie because they’re completely within reach, but her pride is a near-unbreakable barrier that keeps her from sneaking a bite or two.

The dorm is an entirely different story, though – it’s as if Junpei has some sort of radar to determine the instant she steps through the door, and he takes full advantage of this dubious ability. On the third day, she comes home after a grueling student council session, and placed strategically on the coffee table in the lounge is what appears to be half the menu from Wuck. Junpei looks up from his soggy fries and waves cheerily before returning his attention to the greasefest of fast food paradise. She supposes it’d be more accurate to just leave it as ‘fast food greasefest’ but the entire room is filled with the overpowering scent of fried food and she scowls at him. “It smells exactly like Wuck in here,” she says to cover up her glaring desire, though any further coherent thought process is interrupted when he unwraps a burger. From where she’s standing, the finer details of the hamburger are thankfully left unseen but her imagination more than makes up for it with an almost obscene vision of soft melted cheese over a gratuitously fried slab of meat patty stacked in between fresh lettuce and a generous heaping of hot, crispy bacon. The soft bun gives way under his teeth when he takes a bite, and she’s envisioning the way the bacon breaks off when he looks up and gives her the most annoying look possible – he looks so pleased with himself (and the burger) that she huffs and stalks outside, closing the door with a carefully moderated amount of force to avoid giving him any kind of satisfaction.

She decides to go visit Tanaka, figuring that advice from a corrupt businessman couldn’t hurt in the least.

 

Day four of the bet is even worse than the day before because now she’s starting to crave more than just savory foods – she can’t think of ice cream or cereal, let alone fish and meat and eggs, because apparently _none of them are vegan_. Junpei of course springs on this opportunity and frequently disappears into the kitchen, only to come out with a strawberry milk ice cream bar (the most appealing shade of pink possible and it’s starting to bead up with condensation in the warmth of the lounge) or a plate of scrambled eggs (pale yellow with browned edges and the promise of eggy goodness) that are tantalizing in the worst kind of way. She gets back at him for it later that night in Tartarus by making him fight in Monad with a baseball bat while wearing a swimsuit. It’s not the most mature way to deal with it, but it’s not as if he’s going to die because of it, either, so Junpei can suck it up. Any pleas of fatigue that night fall on unsympathetically deaf ears.

 

When day five rolls around, Hamuko ducks into the Student Council room after school, because tennis sounds like a little too much effort at the moment. She spends the afternoon chatting with Hidetoshi and helping Chihiro out with budget issues.

“You’ve been looking a little pale lately, Arisato,” Hidetoshi remarks at around five-forty, looking at her with genuine concern. “Have you been sleeping well?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s nothing big,” she says with a bright smile. “I’ll be fine in a few days, so don’t worry!”

“Hm. Well, take care of yourself.”

It’s a surprisingly big relief that he hadn’t asked if she’d been _eating_ well. That would’ve been more of a bother to deal with. She recalls the painfully bland veggie patty she’d eaten earlier for lunch with a rueful wince and gets back to work.

Being vegan was _hard._

The dorm is quiet when she returns, and Junpei isn’t anywhere in the visible vicinity, so she flops down on a couch, covering her face with a nearby throw pillow.

“... Hey,” Shinjiro says from the kitchen and Hamuko ditches the pillow.

“Hi,” she says, a little confused but delighted nonetheless. “What’s up?”

“Made you some food, so come and eat it while it’s hot,” he says with one of those rare smiles that just about lights up her day, and Hamuko jumps up from the couch to follow him into the dining room area.

“You’re the best, thanks!” she proclaims as she pulls out chairs for the both of them and sits down in one. “What’d you make?”

He sets two plates down on the table. “Chickpea burgers. They don’t taste much like vegetables, but they’re good for you, anyway.”

Hamuko’s looking at him with wide eyes bordering on adoration and he glances to the side almost instinctively. That face of hers ought to be qualified as a military weapon, he decides, as he nods towards her plate and tries to get her to actually eat instead of staring at him. He only succeeds after her stomach growls, loudly, and she laughs sheepishly before digging in with unparalleled enthusiasm.

It’s a good night for both of them.

 

Day six is when she finally snaps.

At this point, it’s not about the bet or the food. The first thing she sees when she walks through the door (after a particularly awkward Fashion Club encounter with Bebe) is Junpei nonchalantly breaking open his chopsticks over an enormous bowl of the specialty from Hagakure’s secret menu.

Damn him and damn this stupid bet, she thinks to herself, dropping her schoolbag on the floor.

He looks up with a provoking kind of jackass grin and the moment their eyes meet is also the moment her feet start moving. Junpei nods cheerily and starts to say something (probably something like ‘Sup, Hamuko? Feeling hungry?’) but never gets the chance because she socks him in the face the next instant. Her fist makes the most satisfying smack she’s ever heard against his jaw and he nearly falls onto the floor, flailing wildly to keep his balance. In the meantime, she snatches the chopsticks from his hands and steals his beef bowl for good measure.

The dorm is silent for approximately two seconds and then Yukari, Fuuka and Ken start giggling like children. “That’s my girl,” Akihiko says in the background with a thumbs-up. Koromaru barks while Aigis, Mitsuru and Shinjiro look vaguely unconcerned but also mildly amused and Hamuko can’t bring herself to care about anything, really, because this is quite possibly the most liberating moment of the entire damn year. She bathes in the glory of possessing good food for a few more moments and then starts to eat.

It’s a good night for her.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> madi had a super cute headcanon/fic idea? thing and i got excited about it (i'll edit and revise later i guess) so here you go!! this one's 4 u madi


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